Visiting Otago museum

Visiting the Otago museum

Last week ,we went to the Otago museum to study Maori culture. Vehiata with me is a group to study the legends of Maori.

On the first floor there is the pacific culture display room and the ancient Maori culture display room. We saw the ancient boat that Maori people used to achieve their land and plenty of old Maoris’ tool .Then we watched a Maori history video. It told the total history of Maori settlement and a short legend about how Maori catch the sun.

(The ancient boat)

The delicate decoration in Maori display room is also a big attraction. Every display cabinet is made by wood. In addition, most of the pillars in this room is carved as traditional Maori art work.

(the gate of a sub-room)

As you can see, this beautiful sub-room door is decorated like old Maori style. And the display inside , are the traditional Maori tools and living products

(A maori boy just counting the spoils of hunt)

This pic is one of the display in the sub-room. An imitate scene of a Maori boy  counting the animals that hunt by himself. That is really lifelike. We can learn that in the ancient Maori , people usually ate seals, ducks and other marine creature. And through the ash behind the boy , we knew that Maori use fire to process foods.

The old Maori house (for living) 

The pic below shows an ancient Maori house. Maori traditional carving cover the whole house. Maori loves red colour.

For our group is especially focus on legends study, the displays in the show room are not really related to Maori legends, after we went through the display room, I went to the natural New Zealand display room.

I saw a lot of lifelike animal samples. Such as kiwi seals, ostrich, and a variety kinds of special species that only living in New Zealand including some special owl and insect. Of course, I see the superstar of New Zealand, kiwi bird.

Cute kiwi bird samples

Overall ,it was a great experience in our task studying. I really enjoyed the museum trip!